One of the most significant decisions anyone can make is when to buy or sell a house. As the single largest purchase most people will make as adults, it’s important to make sure you can afford everything and take care of upkeep. Rest assured that buying a house can be a huge pain with plenty of unfortunate surprises.
In the case of one Redditor posting on r/personalfinance, she has recently listed her house as a single mother after purchasing a home with a fantastic 2.9% interest rate. However, the house has needed a lot of exhausting upkeep over the years, which has now put her in a mindset to list the home for sale.
As is the case when anyone has to make some big life decisions, a thought lingers in her mind about whether or not this is the right move.
The Situation
The year is 2020, and we’re smack in the middle of a pandemic, which has turned the whole world upside down. It’s right around this time that the Redditor, fresh off a divorce, decides that she and her children need their own house, and with a great realtor, they found a home that met all of their needs. Everything felt perfect between a playground and a neighborhood pool, good schools, and being centrally located.
Fast-forward to 2025, and the Redditor has long since realized this is a flipper home. Things started with a new vinyl floor that began to curl or peel, and don’t get started on having to rebuild the chimney. Between these two headaches and everything else, she has spent around $250,000 on down payment, mortgage, fixes, remodeling, repairs, and upkeep in 4.5 years.
Understandably, the Redditor is tired of everything. While she is thankful for a good salary and “very little debt,” she is now faced with paying $25,000 to pay off the roof and gutters. This was the final straw, and now she is thinking about walking away from the home, estimating she can earn around $200,000. The challenge is that she’ll need this money for a new home, which will undoubtedly be more expensive because of the housing market and a much higher interest rate.
What Is The Next Step
Ultimately, as summer is coming up quickly, the Redditor has to decide if now is the right time to sell so that her children can move in and settle into a new home. Add in a recently discovered odor in the home, and it has the original poster holding her hand over the metaphorical “sell” button.
Unsurprisingly, Reddit is chiming in with all kinds of opinions, but in a surprising turn, most of the comments are aggressively against selling. At the top of the reason list is the mortgage rate, which would likely be closer to 7% in today’s market, so Reddit is asking why she would throw away everything she has done and start again. After five years, the Redditor has lived through the problems and come out ahead, so why make a change just for the sake of change?
Other Redditors echo similar thoughts around how expensive it is to move and that another house might seem perfect on the outside, only to have a new set of problems. The bottom line is that it’s okay if a house isn’t ideal. Even new-construction homes have their own set of issues for buyers. The best part is that she hasn’t spent this money needlessly, as she can make it back.
The Grass Isn’t Always Greener
Moving is a big decision that has consequences for everyone involved, and even if she plans to stay in the same neighborhood for the schools, there are still things to consider. For this reason, the Redditor updated her post and decided to stay put.
Chalk up another case of Redditors providing external wisdom and a third-party point of view that helped move this Redditor solidly in one direction. Reading every response, she realized that the grass isn’t and won’t always be greener, so the devil you know is often better than the devil you don’t.
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